■ Politics
Don't buy KMT assets: DPP
Three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers urged business groups yesterday not to buy the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) "ill-gotten" assets lest they become the KMT's accomplices in "stealing" national property. Legislators Lin Chung-mo (林重謨), Tsai Chi-fang (蔡啟芳) and Hou Shui-sheng (侯水盛) made the appeal in a news conference held at the Legislative Yuan. The three lawmakers said the KMT has been reluctant to return what many consider to be its "ill-gotten" party assets to the national coffers. The KMT is reportedly planning to sell off these assets, they said, as they urged business groups to refrain from purchasing them.
■ Internet
Spammers face jail
Spammers could face jail sentences of between six months and five years and fines of up to NT$20,000,000 with the passage of new regulations. According to Department of Posts and Telecommunications officials, most spammers send mass e-mails anonymously, making it impossible for e-mail recipients to take legal action. The new regulations stipulate that the e-mail must include procedures that allow e-mail recipients to express unwillingness to receive further e-mails from the source. In addition, spammers would be forced to clarify the nature of the e-mail by writing "advertisement" in the subject line. The e-mail must also have a return address. Violators could face fines of between NT$5,000,000 and NT$20,000,000 per e-mail. The total amount fined will not exceed NT$20,000,000 however.
■ Politics
Insurance debate needed?
Taipei City Government Spokesman Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) yesterday said that the city government hoped the televised debate between the Department of Health (DOH) and the city government on the city's debts of NT$10.7 billion in health insurance subsidies could take place on Saturday and Sunday and run along the lines of the presidential election debates. Wu said that the city government wanted Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Director-General of the DOH Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) to lead the debate, and expected the Public Television Service to host it. Cabinet Spokesman Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) yesterday said the Cabinet's standpoint was that it would deal with the dispute according to the law, but he also added that in addition to the health insurance premiums, the Taipei City Government also owed the Bureau of Labor Insurance NT$13.5 billion over six years.
■ Archeology
Koxinga ship uncovered
Chinese archeologists are working to salvage a sunken warship that is said to have played a role in the ousting of Dutch colonists from Taiwan some 340 years ago, state press said on Tuesday. The ship belonged to Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), also known as Koxinga, who led Ming troops across the Taiwan Strait from Kinmen in 1661 and ended the 38-year rule of the Dutch colonialists after a year of fighting, Xinhua news agency said. Some 20 archeologists and dozens of divers will gather in the eastern province of Fujian later this week to salvage the warship. The site of the operation is near Dongshan Island, which was one of Cheng's military bases where he trained soldiers and built warships. According to history books, Cheng's two warships, the Zhongjun and Xianfeng, were as tall as a five-story building and needed several hundred sailors to man the ships.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching